


Calculation

by Capucine



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DCU
Genre: BPD, Character Death, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mercy's POV, Spoilers, no love, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:18:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6546508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capucine/pseuds/Capucine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does it mean when you don't believe in love?</p><p>It makes people easy casualties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calculation

**Author's Note:**

> So, definite spoilers for the movie! Don't read if you don't want to be spoiled!

Mercy Graves was not a person easily frightened.

She could coldly calculate as well as Lex Luthor, she supposed, able to make social and political math in moments. How one thing might appear to the public. How to play on emotions. How to scheme and play on perceptions.

She had been raised strictly. Trapped like a rat in a cage—until she became the cat. Figured out her mother’s game and got out.

And found Lex. 

She had never kidded herself into believing there was love there—love was seemingly a fallacy people told themselves to cope with cold, hard reality. Something blared at every turn despite not existing in reality.

She’d tried, once or twice, when young, to find love. It never made the feelings in her chest or her head or so on that she’d been told it was supposed to.

So, it likely did not exist.

Lex and Mercy were a partnership, of sorts. She did the things that he couldn’t handle, was his eyes when he wasn’t around—because two heads were definitely better than one, would be able to find out things faster, would simply be able to be in two places rather than stuck in one.

He’d mentioned his father. Mentioned a few stories. Mercy had nodded. That was what parents did. It was to be expected that his father would hurt him, as her mother hurt her.

Anyone who said anything else was selling something.

And she should have known that he was just a couple moments ahead of her in calculation that day.

That her being a casualty would absolve him of guilt in the public eye. That no one who loved like others pretended to would send her to her death knowingly.

The thought that went through her mind, as she kept her mouth shut and let it happen, was a single one:

_Well played, Lex. Well played._

**Author's Note:**

> My general thought, even though I didn't necessarily like Lex's portrayal, was that he was very much a sociopath. And Mercy probably was somewhere in there too.
> 
> (BPD just means Borderline Personality Disorder, which covers stuff like sociopathy)
> 
> Child abuse from a young age can lead to such disorders, and which was why he was able to just let Mercy be killed by the explosion.
> 
> (I was screaming silently in the movie theater at that part. Ask my SO)


End file.
